A shirt is right or wrong in six places: the collar, the shoulder seam, the chest and body, the sleeve, the cuff and the length. Check them in that order, because the first two decide whether the shirt is worth keeping at all and the other four are adjustments. If you want the equivalent exercise for a jacket, how to measure for a suit covers the numbers behind it.
The collar
The collar fits when two fingers slide flat between it and your neck with mild resistance. Fasten the top button and check. One finger means it is too small, and you will feel it by mid-afternoon. Three or more means the collar will gape when you move, and a tie will sit badly on it.
The collar is where most people notice a shirt is wrong, and it is also where sizing lies to you most. A shirt sold as your neck size is measured at the collar band, and manufacturers differ from one another, so the number on the label is a starting guess rather than a measurement.
Look at the back of the collar too. It should sit against your neck all the way round, with about a centimetre of it visible above a jacket collar. A collar that stands away at the back is a sign the shirt’s yoke is cut for a different posture, which is a body problem rather than a neck-size one.
The shoulder seam
The seam joining the sleeve to the body should land on the outside edge of your shoulder, where the flat of the shoulder turns down into the arm. Stand normally in front of a mirror and find the bony point; the seam should sit on it or within a centimetre of it.
The shirt is too small across the back when the seam sits inboard, on top of the shoulder, and it will pull whenever you reach forward. It is too big when the seam hangs down the upper arm, and the sleeve will bunch at the armhole no matter what else you do.
This is the point at which to stop and think, because a shoulder seam cannot be moved on a finished shirt. Everything else on this page is adjustable to some degree. This one is not, and a shirt that fails here is the wrong shirt.
The chest and body
The body fits when nothing pulls horizontally and you can gather roughly a hand’s width of spare cloth at your side. Fasten every button and stand still. Look for horizontal pulling between the buttons, especially at the chest and at the waist. Any horizontal crease radiating from a button means the shirt is under tension there.
Then pinch the cloth at your side, just below the armpit. You are looking for roughly a hand’s width of spare cloth you can gather. Less than that and the shirt will pull when you sit down. Much more and it will billow out of a trouser waistband and look untucked within an hour.
Raise both arms above your head. The shirt should come untucked slightly and then settle back down. If it pulls hard across the back or drags the trouser waistband up with it, the body is too short or too narrow through the shoulders.
The sleeve and cuff
The cuff should rest where the base of your thumb meets your wrist, on the bone or a centimetre past it, with your arms hanging naturally. That is the position that leaves the right amount of shirt showing below a jacket sleeve, which is the reason the measurement matters at all.
The cuff should be snug enough that the shirt does not slide down over your hand when you drop your arm, and loose enough to fit two fingers inside. Those two requirements together are what people mean when they say a cuff fits: it stays put without gripping.
Check the sleeve width at the bicep as well. There should be enough room to bend your elbow fully without the cloth going taut. A sleeve that is tight at the bicep will wear through at the elbow long before the rest of the shirt is finished.
The length
A shirt to be tucked needs enough length that raising your arms does not pull it out of the trousers. That usually means the tail sits several centimetres below the seat. Anything shorter is a shirt you will be re-tucking all day.
Untucked, the rule is different: the hem should finish somewhere around the middle of the trouser fly and cover the seat only partly. A shirt long enough to tuck well is usually too long to wear out, which is why a shirt cut for both rarely does either properly. Decide which one you actually want before it is made.
Which of these a tailor can fix
Six of the eleven failures below are fixable, and the two that decide whether a shirt is worth keeping — the collar band and the shoulder seam — are not.
| Fit point | Fixable? | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Collar too tight | No | The band is finished and there is no allowance in it |
| Collar too loose | Sometimes | Can be taken in a little; a large gap is a remake |
| Shoulder seam wrong | No | Structural. The shirt is the wrong shirt |
| Body too wide | Yes, easily | Taken in at the side seams, and the cheapest common alteration |
| Body too narrow | Rarely | Limited to the seam allowance, which on shirts is small |
| Sleeve too long | Yes | Shortened at the cuff |
| Sleeve too short | No | There is nothing to let down |
| Sleeve too wide | Yes | Tapered below the elbow |
| Cuff too loose | Yes | Button moved or the cuff taken in |
| Length too long | Yes | Shortened at the hem |
| Length too short | No | Same reason as the sleeve |
The pattern is the same one that governs jackets: cloth can be removed and rarely added, and structural lines do not move. What can be altered on a suit sets out the rule behind it in full.
So the decision is straightforward. If your shirt fails on the collar or the shoulder, no alteration will rescue it and the money is better spent on made-to-measure shirts in Bangtao, where the collar and the yoke are cut to your neck and posture from the start. If it fails anywhere else, it is worth keeping — alterations to a garment you already own will get it there for a fraction of the price of replacing it.